


Interlude

by SleepySappho



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, I'm a sucker for harrow being cute, Implied Sexual Content, Lesbian Character, Love, Sleepy Cuddles, Slight Canon Divergence, Soft Lesbian Bullshit, bedhead, implied sadness, messy hair, they're so in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 10:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21426892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepySappho/pseuds/SleepySappho
Summary: Harrowhark and Gideon share a brief moment in the morning light before everything goes wrong
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 5
Kudos: 72





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Locked Tomb Discord for spurring me on to write this sweet misery! This book fucking ruined me so I'm probably gonna be writing a lot of fluff au's where nobody dies in the future.

_As long as Gideon can remember, Harrowhark has always been immaculate. Tidy. Clean and precise and organized. _

_And now she's drooling on Gideon's pillow, her short, dark curls tangled into knots and matted with sweat. Gideon lightly runs a finger up her side, counting each prominent rib as Harrow's chest rises and falls, steadily. Harrow curls in slightly at the touch, her legs becoming ever so slightly more tangled with Gideon's own, and Gideon feels her chest splitting open, her heart exposed and blood spilling out onto sheets between them, all her desire and devotion and, quiet, secret dreams rushing out at once and she has to bite her tongue to keep from waking Harrow with a mess of half-formed praises and confessions. They bubble up inside her, pooling in her throat, and holding them in feels like drowning, but she will not wake Harrow a moment early. She is too thoroughly beautiful like this: small and thin and looking so, so vulnerable in the morning light. Gideon knows better, knows the iron strength her necromancer carries with her, and knows the price of it too. Even when it is just the two of them, even when Harrow loses herself in the deepest pits of ecstasy, she holds onto that strength. Its only in sleep that the armor sloughs of like a sheet of dead skin, leaving her raw and vulnerable and sensitive to a world she has tried so hard to numb herself to._

_Harrow's eyes flutter, peel open, and for a moment her gaze is lidded and simple, seeking nothing more confirmation that her cavalier did not vanish while she slept. Gideon sweeps in, takes advantage of the moment to help Harrow indulge in languid kiss before awarness steals back over her eyes and she fortifies herself against affection._

_"Good morning, my Mistress of Umbral Darkness," Gideon whispers, her voice thick with unrestrained devotion._

_"Gideon," the necromancer murmurs, shutting her eyes again and burying her face in her nemesis's shoulder. "Tell me we don't have to leave this bed."_

_"We don't have to leave this bed," Gideon repeated dutifly, and Harrow groaned at the lie._

_"I don't want to be parted with you agsin so soon after..." Harrow sighed, leaving the mess of two decades love and hatred intertwined unspoken. "Promise to stay here with me."_

_"Hey," her cavalier replies, kissing the top of Harrow's head and pulling her somehow, impossibly closer, "One flesh, one end, right? I meant it. Not going anywhere."_

_Silence hangs over them, uneasy, heavy with the weight of an inevitable conclusion they were both avoiding reaching. _

_"Harrow," Gideon whispers again, pulling back and titling her lover's chin up, meeting her gaze._

_"One flesh, one end," the daughter of the Ninth repeats, pressing her face back into Gideon, as if the broad expanse of her arms could encompass her, shield her from the nightmares that lived in the walls of Camus House. _

_"I promise."_

**Author's Note:**

> If you hadn't guessed, there's slight canon divergence where both Gideon and Harrow have put the pieces together about the nature of Lyctorhood a bit earlier than in the book, and are desperately trying to ignore the obvious conclusion.


End file.
